Desert Bound

The purpose of this trip is to attend a retreat hosted by two graduates of the same 300 hour teacher training school I attended (one, my classmate) and one of the teachers from our program in India – a Spring Renewal yoga and Ayurveda retreat.

We boarded a bus in Amman to start our journey with our three facilitators and two guides.  First stop….Petra.

Petra is one of the oldest cities in the world and one of the seven wonders of the world.  Petra is 240km (149 mi) south of Amman and it began to prosper in 1st century BC through trade in frankincense, myrrh and spices.  It is a city carved into sandstone cliffs.  For awhile it was annexed to the Roman Empire. A large earthquake destroyed much of the city in 4th century AD.  The city was ultimately abandoned by the 7th century after the earthquake and changes in trade routes.

Local Bedouin’s continued to inhabit the city, but otherwise it was lost to the world. Bedouin’s are nomadic desert people and custodians of ancient traditions and lifestyles who live in harmony with the arid and hostile environment.  

In 1812, a Swiss explorer set out to ‘rediscover’ Petra dressed as an Arab and working with a Bedouin guide.  After this, the city became known in the West.  Petra is know as the rose-red city, based on the color of the rock many of the structures are carved from.

Over 1M people visit Petra annually.  80-85% of the lost city is yet to be discovered.  More than 20 films have scenes filmed in Petra.  Petra had a highly advanced water conduit system for it’s time including dams and channels.  

In the 1980’s the Bedouin’s were removed from the caves they had called home in Petra to Uum Sayhoun, a village just outside of this city, when it was classified as an UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site.  This village was unable to host all of the displaced people, many of the homes lacked water and electricity and it severely disrupted their way of life and forced an abandonment of their culture.  A large number of the Bedouin’s now work with local tourism offering donkey and camel rides and selling souvenirs. Our tour guide was a Bedouin descendant.

To access Petra, you first navigate The Siq.  The Siq is a narrow natural gorge that is just over 1km long (0.62 mi).  The Siq features tunnels to redirect waters from flash floods, two water channels  and a paved road.  Beyond it’s natural beauty there are many carvings along the way that reflect the religious and trade history.

As you exit The Siq you come face to face with The Treasury, a 39.5 meter (almost 130 ft) monument.  It was actually used as a mausoleum.

A few famous films that feature Petra include Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Aladdin, Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen and The Mummy Returns.

After the treasury you venture past many tombs and a theatre.  Petra covers 263 square kilometers (about 50,000 football fields) and our journey barely scratched the surface.  The recommended visit length is a minimum of 3 days, but it would take much longer to see all that has been currently discovered.  There is so much more than we were able to see in our visit, but what we saw was truly amazing and unbelievable.

As we toured this magical site you could feel the energy change as you navigated The Siq – it was increasingly calming and grounding. I sensed different feelings, emotions and scents of long ago times as we wandered and I was repeatedly caught off guard by these. Personally there was a deep sense of calm and awe and again that recurring reminder of my personal trials and tribulations not even registering on the scale of this planets history and future, so add humbling to the list of emotions and feelings.